Sometimes waiting for popular new videos to hit your inbox / chat window / wall / feed / mobile / pager / two-way radio can be frustrating. Sometimes keeping up with the latest YouTube fad can be hard to do. Sometimes you want to know more about what's happening from where it's happening. Sometimes you just need something to get through the afternoon.

We want to help.

Ladies and gentlemen: YouTube Trends, a destination for daily insight into the zeitgeist of the world's largest video site.

The idea for YouTube Trends started with our desire to find new ways of identifying the viral and newsworthy content people love to share and packaging it in an easy to digest format. With over 35 hours of video now uploaded to YouTube every minute, we wanted one place to distill the videos people were sharing and discussing with their friends as well as understand what YouTube could teach us about our culture and current events.

Here's a video of what we came up with:

What you can find on YouTube Trends:

New algorithmically-generated feeds that highlight trending videos and topics. (Over there →)

A twice-daily collection of videos called "4 at 4" drawn from those feeds and from top video curation sites around the web. (If you’re on the homepage, up there ↑)

A blog with more in-depth and contextual explorations of videos, trends, and cultural phenomenon as seen through the lens of YouTube, using YouTube’s own internal data. (You’re there now ↔)

And a brand new dashboard that allows you to quickly explore what’s popular in different cities in the United States and in countries around the world, as well as within specific demographic sets. (Top right ↱)

Trends will also have billboard-style charts, cool data visualizations, and features highlighting what the YouTube ecosystem can tell us about major events as they unfold. As the project evolves, it will act as a laboratory for our engineers and staff to test out new ways of uncovering, displaying, and providing context for important or interesting video trends.

We see YouTube as a way to not just be entertained and informed, but also as place that can help us understand more about the world we live in and the people we live in it with. And that’s what YouTube Trends is all about.

For more information on YouTube Trends, visit our FAQ or watch a video walkthrough here.

Also: In conjunction with YouTube's announcement of the most watched videos of 2010, YouTube Trends will spend the next 12 days exploring the top videos and trends from the year that was, starting today with our breakdowns of the most viewed videos in news and politics, sports, and trailers.